I'm a geochemist. In the past ten years I've fixed mass spectrometers, blasted sapphires with a laser beam, explored for uranium in a nature reserve, and measured growth patterns in fish ears, and helped design the next generation of the world's most advanced ion probe. My main interest is in-situ mass spectrometry, but I have a soft spot in my heart for thermodynamics, drillers, and cosmochemistry.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Before I get stuck in, I’d like to interrupt this blog to plug a women in science survey promoted here. It would be a great place to complain about the inappropriateness, in a gender-neutral discipline, of the lewd and irreverent memory tricks that are described below.

Back to mnemomics.For a scientist, I have the world’s leakiest memory. So I get a kick out of these things. After all, if I read enough stupid sentences, then maybe, possibly, one or two of them will sink in.

So, starting with the big picture, there is the spectral sequence for stars.

OBAFGKM

For the past 50 years, this has been immortalized by various science fiction writers. I think Larry Niven is one of them, but please correct me if I'm wrong. Their classic line is, of course,

Oh, Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me.

That was fine for the 50’s, but a Canadian academic has suggested that in this day and age, on most university campuses, the phrase should probably be supplanted with

Only Boys Accepting Feminism Get Kissed Meaningfully.

For my brain, the less tasteful phrases are generally more memorable. Which is why I appreciate the universally offensive:

Oedipus, Basically A Friendly Guy, Knew Mother.

Scaling down, there is a famous mnemonic for the 9 planets, but my perverse brain can only recall,

My Very Endearing Mother Just Shot Up Near Prison.

I might have misremembered that one.

But enough astronomy. On my first ever geology field trip, the departmental trip to Lake Champlain in fall of 1991, we had a very long van trip from Rhode Island. I remember only two things about that trip. The first is that Katie Stanbury was in my van. The second is that we, including everyone else whose identity now eludes me, made up a mnemonic for the geologic time scale. Starting with the Precambrian, and using the old-fashioned American system, we decided that

Subdividing the Precambrian into the Archean and the Proterozoic allows one to lead with Angry Polonius...

Two years later, Gayle Gleason, one of the best geology teachers I’ve ever had, subdivided the Cenozoic by teaching us that:

Pigeon Egg Omelettes Make People Puke.

Of course, an ideal mnemonic would allow the memorization of the entire periodic table. The first three rows are easy:Harpies HealLittle Bed Bugs Can Not Ovulate For NeophytesNaked Mongols Always Slide Past Scantily Clad Argonauts.But once you hit the transition elements, the 18 elements per line gets rather complicated. Nobody will ever remember:

I tried to go on, but ran out of gas at Antimony, after realizing that I would have no chance at getting anything for Xenon, three elements later.

Fortunately, we don’t need to. Since the table is in fact a table, and not just a list, all we really need to do is remember which column things are in (usually discernable from their charge), and then just remember those columns. The only tricky bits are the Group VIIIa elements (Feel Cold Nipples, Rude Rhyming Paladins, OswaldIrked Patrick), and the rare earth elements. But the latter are easy, given a suitably crass Lanthanide mnemonic:

8 comments:

Xena? We can do Xena. Just give me a few hours to type less-than; B; greater-than 184 times...

BTW, I should add that the process of making one of these things up is probably a lot more conducive to learning than actually memorizing somebody else's. Whether it is Gaudy Tubercular Dykes or God's Tuba Dynamo, the process of looking up silly words is what makes it easy to remember the relative positions of Dysprosium and Terbium.

For Geological Time periods of paleo- and Mesozoic, I use this one:Can Our Science Dept Make People Pass. They Just can't.or, Come On Stupid, Don't Make Pointless Presentations.For Moh's scale of hardness:Tall Girls Can F*** And Other Queer Things Can Do.Finally for REEs:La-ncey Pr-ince Needs 65 Sm-all Eu-ropean Gods Tobe Wholly Dy-ed Early Tomorrow. Why-be Lu-dicrous?

Disclaimer:

All opinions, measurements, figures, and facts on this page are the personal opinions of Charles W. Magee, Jr, and do not represent the views of any of his employers: past, present, present-but-about-to-be-past, or future. None of the content herein has been subject to peer review, and should be treated with caution or derision. Any passing mention of OSHA code violations, criminal activities, unethical or unscientific behavior, or the clandestine Australian nuclear weapons program are fictions created to make rhetorical points, and do not represent the reality of my, or anyone else's, workplace. Do not attempt any scientific protocols described herein at home, with the exception of the chocolate chip cookie recipe. Do not apply the products of that protocol to individuals with heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure or cholesterol, egg, wheat, dairy, or chocolate allergies. Do not view this blog continuously for more than 45 minutes without stretching and taking other precautions to prevent computer-related chronic injury.
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